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- Welcome to Wired News.
- Sunk by Windows NT
- *Page 1* of 1
- 04:35 PM Jul. 24, 1998 PT
- While Microsoft continues to trumpet the success of its NT operating
- system over Unix-based systems, the US Navy is havingsecond thoughts
- about putting NT at the helm.
- http://www.microsoft.com/windows/dailynews/072098.htm
- A system failure on the USS Yorktown last September temporarily
- paralyzed the cruiser, leaving it stalled in port for the remainder of a
- weekend.
- http://www.spear.navy.mil/ships/cg48/
- "For about two-and-a-half hours, the ship was what we call 'dead in the
- water,'" said Commander John Singley of the Atlantic Fleet Surface
- Force.
- The warship was testing its new Smart Ship system, which uses
- off-the-shelf PCs to automate tasks that sailors have traditionally done
- themselves. http://www.dt.navy.mil/smartship
- "The Navy started the Smart Ship program with three essential goals in
- mind: improve combat readiness, reduce crew workload and operating
- costs, and to do it safely," said Singley.
- The Smart Ship program is still in development, and officials said
- glitches are to be expected, but in this case the problem appeared to be
- more political than technical. Using Microsoft's Windows NT operating
- system in such a critical environment, some engineers said, was a bad
- move.
- "The simple root of the problem on Yorktown was that politics were
- played in the assigning of the contract -- there was not a discussion of
- engineers, it was just a very small group of people pitching for it,"
- said an engineer close to the project, who spoke on the condition of
- anonymity.
- In a statement issued this week on why NT was chosen over Unix, the Navy
- said that while Windows NT was specified in the Statement of Work as the
- operating system for the workstations in question, other components of a
- coming upgrade will primarily utilize Unix-based systems.
- "They rushed this stuff on the ship, there was no real prototype, and
- then they tried to make things work as they went along," the source
- said. "I don't think that Unix or NT were ever really evaluated -- it
- was just somebody thinking this was good, with no knowledge."
- The statement said that Unix is still being considered for future Smart
- Ship technologies, acknowledging that many systems already utilize
- Unix-based systems and that a "government team is currently researching
- the best technical and financial solution[s] ... of which the decision
- to use Windows NT or Unix will play a major role."
- The source of the problem on the Yorktown was that bad data was fed into
- an application running on one of the 16 computers on the LAN. The data
- contained a zero where it shouldn't have, and when the software
- attempted to divide by zero, a buffer overrun
- <http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/8429.html> occurred --
- crashing the entire network and causing the ship to lose control of its
- propulsion system.
- Singley said that human factors were considered in the decision to use
- NT, partly because it was thought to have a more friendly graphical user
- interface (GUI) than Unix systems. Critics of the move pointed out that
- modern Unix-like operating systems have multiple GUIs to choose from.
- Some additional factors may have influenced the decision to go with NT
- as well. In the Navy's "Information Technology for the 21st Century"
- (IT-21) report, NT 4.0 is named the operating system standard. In
- addition, some commercial, off-the-shelf products were used, which tend
- to come pre-installed with Microsoft products. Furthermore, Microsoft's
- Bill Gates nominated
- <http://198.49.220.47/texis/si/sc/innovate/+DneQETRXwBme4Bo0Xwwww/brief.html>
- the Smart Ship program for the ComputerWorld/Smithsonian Awards Program.
- But there has been growing public scrutiny over the use of Windows NT in
- critical enterprise environments.
- http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/12121.html
- "Why Windows NT Server 4.0 continues to exist in the enterprise would be
- a topic appropriate for an investigative report in the field of
- psychology or marketing, not an article on information technology," said
- John Kirch, a networking consultant and Microsoft certified
- professional, in his white paper, Microsoft Windows NT Server 4.0 versus
- Unix . "Technically, Windows NT Server 4.0 is no match for any Unix
- operating system."
- http://unix-vs-nt.org
- The paper goes on to say that, when reliability is of utmost importance,
- Unix-like systems are preferable. That includes the free, open-source
- Linux operating system, which was recently shown to be the only
- non-Microsoft operating system whose user base is steadily growing.
- Vendors including Oracle, Informix, and Computer Associates have
- recently announced plans to support Linux.
- The Navy has let a contract for four more Smart Ships, with the
- possibility of adding another 22 to the fleet.
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